This invention is directed to an airlock extension for a docking system for a vinyl-sided clean room and more particularly for delivery of sterile materials from a non-sterile autoclave-transport unit into a clean room.
Today""s research often involves the housing and maintenance of large numbers of rodents that require sterile conditions. These specialized rodent types include gnotobiotic, transgenic, and severely compromised immunodeficient (SCID) to name a few. Commercial breeding and maintenance colonies of these animals can be particularly large in size. Large quantities of sterilized bedding, caging, feeding and watering must be provided in caring for these animals.
In the past, various types of docking systems were used to deliver the sterile items to the animal room. These systems used mechanical means, which had to be very accurately aligned, to make a positive seal. This method limited the size and volume of material that could be delivered to the animal housing room. These systems were not conducive to supplying very large rooms.
A known system for delivering sterile products to a clean room has been set forth by U.S. Pat. No. 4,304,224 to Fortney. One operational drawback to the Fortney system is the limited capacity to deliver a large quantity of sterilized materials. This system used stainless steel cylinders (approximately 30-gallon capacity) to hold and deliver the sterilized items. The cylinders had to be accurately aligned by mechanical means to a mating port on the clean room structure. This was both labor intensive and greatly limited the quantity of feed, water, and bedding which could be delivered at one time.
One purpose of the bioBubble Clean Room with the inventive docking system is to allow the user to deliver autoclave materials directly to the clean room without having to bring the non-sterile autoclave-transport unit into the clean room. The docking system includes a section of flexible plasticized fabric material which can be moved to different small angles so that a large, heavy stainless steel container of autoclaved materials can be delivered to the clean air room and thereafter dirty bedding and other soiled items can be loaded back into the large container for processing those items.
This patent application describes one container attached to the airlock. But it would be possible use the invention to attach one container to each side of the vinyl-sided clean room. A compressible gasket is another means of attaching the autoclave container without complicated mechanical attachments. It does not have to be perfectly aligned or straight to work properly.
It also takes minimal physical strength to perform attachment. It only takes one person to attach the invention to an autoclave and a clean room where prior art mechanical attachments would take two persons on an autoclave container of this size intended to function with the invention. The invention also minimizes the leakages of the sterilant mist.
It is therefore an object of the invention to provide a docking system by which non-sterile large containers containing sterile items can be docked with a clean room for adding sterile products to the clean room and for removing waste items from the clean room.
Another object is to provide a docking system for a clean room which easily can be adjusted for connecting a large non-sterile container to the clean room.
Still another object is to provide a docking system which permits large amounts of autoclaved materials, such as feed, water, and bedding, to be efficiently delivered to vinyl-sided clean rooms.
Yet another object is to permit the use of large containers to be used which contain large numbers of sterile items to be transferred to a clean vinyl-sided room without contaminating the sterile items nor the clean vinyl-sided room.
While still another object is to provide a docking system within which personnel can operate to transfer sterile items from a large container containing sterile items without contaminating the clean air room.
Still a further object is to provide a novel sealing gasket means to improve the seals achieved between mating flexible surfaces of the clean room and the extension, and between the extension and the autoclavable container.
Other objects and advantages of the invention will become clear to those skilled in the art from reviewing the drawings and specification.